Star Squadron: Student Driver is a game created in the Godot Engine, a 2D space shooter where your only weapon is a ping pong cannon. As the title would imply, it's not a game that takes itself too seriously.
The intent with the project is to tweak many of the expected tropes of the space shooter genre. Not only is your ship under-equipped, the controls are deliberately slippery to simulate the frictionless mechanics of moving about in a zero G environment. On top of that, the game encourages you to move fast and to repeat your runs to get better times. Of course, that mechanic competes with the survival element and lures players into speeding around the maps and accidentally slamming into hazards.
As a creative exercise, the game was enormously rewarding to make. The concept is based on a challenge to come up with the most ridiculous means of explaining the game mechanics I had in mind - a ship within a ship, racing around and only being able to eliminate enemies passive-aggressively. That's why the cut scenes with the Star Squadron official were so much fun to write. The people who put you in this insane situation have been disciplined and suspended from our intramural softball league for three games, perhaps four.
The game is now available (for free) on Steam if you'd like to check it out.
